was a Japanese gōnō, honjin master, student of kokugaku, and Shinto priest. He was the father of Shimazaki Tōson. He primarily wrote under the name of , but later in life also adopted the names and finally . His courtesy name was , and he was referred to by relatives as , the family's hereditary name.
Biography
Shimazaki Masaki was born under the apotropaic name Kanatarō to , hereditary chief of the Magome relay station in the Kiso Valley. As a young boy, he also used the name . The young Masaki taught himself to read and write with great difficulty using the few books available in the village, often outdated and poorly copied manuscripts, in both Japanese and Classical Chinese.
After an introduction by of Nakatsugawa, Masaki became an exceptionally dedicated disciple of the nativist Shintō theology of Motoori Norinaga and Hirata Atsutane under the tutelage of , a student of the samurai-scholar Aoyama Kagemichi of Naegi Domain, the first Hirata disciple in the region. The theory of Hirata Atsutane, a fundamentalist, that the importation of foreign ideas like Buddhism in ancient times had corrupted a pristine, theocratic Japanese nation powerfully influenced Masaki for the rest of his life. Alongside the other Hirata disciples of Mino and Naegi, Masaki was involved in the promotion of traditional Shintō funeral practices in opposition to the officially mandated Buddhist alternative. During this time he also became acquainted with and Tsunoda Tadayuki.
In 1864, after having assumed leadership of the station from his father, the Tengutō passed through Magome. Though he wanted to travel to Kyoto to assist the other Hirata disciples in their agitation there, he stayed in Magome due to a sense of responsibility to his family and the people of the village. He remained in Magome throughout the Boshin War, and on more than one occasion arranged lodging for the revolutionary Imperial Army.
In 1874, having retired and passed financial authority to his eldest son, he travelled to Tokyo and secured employment within the Historiography Division (考証課) of the Department of Religion (教部省), the temporary successor to the older Department of Divinities. However, he soon left disillusioned with his coworkers flippant attitude toward and lack of dedication to Shinto. That same year, he inscribed a poem on a folding hand fan in which he expressed his fear that Japan's cultural values and national identity would be either forgotten or discarded by a population infatuated with Western culture:
At the time of a public cavalcade by the Emperor Meiji, Masaki threw the fan into what he believed to be the carriage of the emperor's outriders in the hope that the message would come to the emperor's attention. He was arrested immediately charged with the crime of impiety, but was not penalized beyond a minor fine due to the court's assessment of the motivations for his act. He later became aware that the fan had in fact landed in the carriage of the emperor himself.
In 1875, as part of the government's expulsion of Hirata influence, Masaki was rusticated by the Department of Religion to the remote Minashi Shrine to serve as a resident priest. He remained at Minashi for four years. During that time, he became known to locals for bursting into tears while conducting lectures on legendary national history.
Masaki returned home in 1880. Not long after, during a personal inspection of the Hokuriku region by the Emperor, he was reprimanded for attempting to present a petition to the Emperor's entourage regarding what he saw as the slighting of native culture by progressive and secularist national policies. At this time Masaki began to experience nightmares and hallucinations.
Following repeated personal setbacks, difficulty with alcoholism, and alienation from family and neighbors, Masaki was ultimately driven insane by despair. After attempting to burn down the local temple, he was imprisoned by his family in a wooden cage behind the house. Thereafter he became increasingly deranged while his health rapidly declined due to starvation, hypothermia, and exposure to his own feces and urine. By late 1886 he had died from beriberi induced heart failure. Contrary to his wishes, he was buried in the Buddhist cemetery of the Eishōji.